She collected mailers worth chasing clip the fridge door

Subject- Basics of Marketing 105

CASE STUDY – CCE 2

How can any marketer get inside your mind to understand how you actually make purchase decisions? Structured questionnaire surveys may have a role for collecting large scale factual data, but they have major weaknesses when it comes to understanding individuals' attitudes. Qualitative approaches, such as focus groups can get closer to the truth, but participants often still find themselves inhibited from telling the full story. Many marketing managers, especially those without large research budgets, inevitably end up relying on their own personal experiences to understand how consumers behave. This may be easy for target markets which are in the 20-40 age range (the age of typical marketers), but how do you get inside the mind of teenagers, or elderly people?

Ethnographic approaches are becoming increasingly popular among marketers as a means of getting closer to the truth about consumer behaviour. Ethnographic research is nothing new, having been used by anthropologists in their study of the rituals of tribal people. Marketers have been relatively recent converts to the techniques of ethnography. The advertising agency BMP DDB has taken on board the techniques of ethnography in its "Project Keyhole" in a manner which is reminiscent of anthropologists' practice of living with tribes in order to understand them. Its consumer researchers live with a family for several days in order to record their every move. The project is designed to meet the needs of client companies who are looking for more than the data gathered using traditional quantitative and qualitative research techniques.

Mrs Jones's eye for an offer made her a keen scrutiniser of direct mail. She checked mailings for 'catches' in the small print and for any special offers. She collected mailers worth chasing up on a clip on the fridge door, along with vouchers collected from magazines. Mrs Jones’s financial nous means that she managed the family's money.

Not surprisingly, these details did not come out in database information. Of the commercial databases, CACI's People UK and Lifecycle UK databases seemed to be most at variance with the reality of the Jones' life. They got their ages wrong, incorrectly surmized that they took business flights and incorrectly attributed Mr Jones with being computer literate. Nobody in the household read the FT or the Independent as predicted - they read the Daily Mail instead. Some of the other points made by CACI were right, but were felt to be very generalized and could apply to anybody.

2. What new possibilities, if any, for market segmentation are opened up by this approach to the study of buyer behaviour?

3. Critically assess the scope for expanding this type of research as a means of learning more about buyer behaviour.